It is desirable to provide a dispersion that contains one or more polymer in the form of dispersed particles in an aqueous medium. It is also desirable to provide such dispersions that are designed so that, when the dispersion is applied to a substrate and the water is allowed to evaporate, the particles are capable of forming a coherent film that provides good resistance to water and good resistance to alcohol. In the past, attempts to design such dispersions were hampered because dispersions could be designed that had good water resistance or good alcohol resistance but not both.
When such a coherent film is made, it is desirable that the polymers in the final film be crosslinked. In the past, such crosslinking required heating the film to relatively high temperature for relatively long times.
M. Lahtinen, et. al. (Journal of Applied Polymer Science, vol. 87, no. 4, pp. 610-615, 2003), describes mixtures of a latex polymer and a glycidyl compound, where the latex polymer contains 3% by weight of acrylic acid and the glycidyl compound contains 1, 2, or 3 glycidyl groups per molecule. It is desired to provide dispersions that have one or more of the following advantages: the dispersions are stable; the dispersions can produce films that have both good water resistance and good alcohol resistance; or the dispersions can achieve useful extent of crosslinking by heating to relatively low temperatures or by heating for relatively short times or both.